up with all week,” she says, almost like she’s annoyed with him, which is a great technique. “And now Saturday night too. These girls are nothing but boxed wine and havoc.”
They both turn and look at me. I don’t know what to say, but I have never drunk boxed wine.
“Colette,” he says, “can you come talk to me for a second?”
They walk into the next room for a minute and I can hear his voice rise a little, can make out a few words—responsibilities and what if and young girls.
“What do you want me to do? These girls’ parents just don’t care,” she says, which feels funny to hear.
A few seconds go by and then they both reappear.
“Matt, go back to bed,” she says, trying for an aggrieved smile, one hand on his back. “You’re exhausted. I’ll take care of it.”
Matt French looks over at Beth, buried on the sofa, and then away.
For a second, his gaze rests on me. His sleep-smeared face, the worry on it, and his bloodshot eyes on me.
“Good night, Addy,” he says, and I honestly never knew he knew my name.
I watch him duck his head under the archway then ascend the carpeted steps.
Good night, Matt French.
Pulling me into the bathroom, Coach sits me down on the tub ledge, the questions coming so fast and the pink lights flaming.
“I don’t know what happened,” I say, but Beth’s words keep caroming back: hand on the back of my head and shoved it down there and kept saying, “Do me, cheerleader. Do me.”
Coach makes me repeat everything five, ten times, or so it seems. I’m getting head spins. At some point I start to slide against the shower curtain, but she yanks me up again and makes me drink four cups of water back-to-back.
“What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “You saw her legs, the red marks?”
But then, my hand to my own leg, I think of the dusky violet bruise I have in the very same spot from Mindy’s gouging thumb, lifting me to a thigh stand.
And there’s the matter of those lime panties, folded tidily in Beth’s purse.
But Coach isn’t listening, isn’t even looking at me.
She has Beth’s phone in her hand. I never even saw her take it.
She’s scrolling through call history. Outgoing calls and texts to “Sarge Will,” six, seven, eight of them.
Suddenly, she flinches.
A text, Come on by, Sarge Stud, we’re all waiting. There’s a picture attached that looks to be Beth’s zebra-print bra, breasts pressed tightly together.
Clattering the phone against the wall, she catapults it down the toilet.
As if it mattered.
Who knew, really, what digital obscenities swam around in that phone of Beth’s, what electronic blight she’d hoarded in its deepest pockets.
My drunken head and all I can think is, Oh, Coach, she’s got you in her sights. Fair or not, she’s got you. Please get smarter, fast.
Later that night, I creep from the rolled-arm living room sofa to the den. I see Beth, blanket twisted between her legs, her whole body twisting on itself like a snake.
“Beth,” I whisper, tucking the throw blanket tighter around her. “Is it true? Is it true Prine did things to you? Made you do things?”
Her eyes don’t open, but I know she knows I’m there. I feel like I’ve tunneled my way into her dream, and that she’ll answer me there.
“I made him make me,” she murmurs. “And he did. Can you believe he did?”
Made him make me. Oh, Beth, what does that even mean? I picture her taunting him. Doing her witchy Beth things.
“Made him make you do what?” I try.
“I didn’t care,” she says. “It was worth it.”
“Beth,” I say. “Worth what?”
“She needs to see what she’s doing to us,” Beth says. “I will make her see.”
This is the way Beth can talk. Her Big Talk, her campfire spook story talk, her steel-toed captain talk. It’s meant to put a shake on me, and it always works.
“She didn’t even know we were at the party,” I say.
“She thinks she can go about her sluttish ways and do whatever she wants. We’re just girls and we were there, and anything could have happened to us.”
“We wanted to go,” I say, my voice hardening, “so we went.”
“Because of her,” she says, her hand lifting, coiling around her throat. Her hand, it’s shaking. “We went because of her.”
“Not me,” I say, my voice a bark. “That’s not why I went. What did it have to do with her?”
She looks at me through half-shut